3 ms·

Good window management is a niche skill (on the user side). I often see "normies" waste so much time tabbing between windows or turning their heads between moni

by elric 2y ago

Good window management is a niche skill (on the user side). I often see "normies" waste so much time tabbing between windows or turning their heads between monitors or whatnot. When I want stuff side by side, I press a hotkey to arrange stuff side by side. My WM has a bunch of tags (virtual desktops on steroids), where each tag has its own purpose and a dedicated default layout (tiled for terminals, fullscreen for a browser, etc). I feel like "tiled vs non-tiled" is a false dichotomy. It's tiled and floating and full screen and spiraling and horizontal split and vertical split, etc. The right tool for the job.

doubled112 2y ago
Absolutely agree. Use what works, and we should always be grateful to have good options. However there's a lot to most of the tiling window managers that never clicked for me. I've always assumed it's a personal problem. Perhaps I have spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about "why not?" I'm not good at remembering keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+Z seems to be all I need. I've tried sorting and categorizing apps into tags, but it makes me slower. If apps open on a virtual desktop that I couldn't see, I'd just lose it. If I can't see something it stops existing pretty quickly, which makes even too many virtual desktops a losing battle. Inconsistent behaviour will always pull me out of whatever I'm doing. 4 apps tiled, 5th app opens in a floating window, now I'm distracted. For now I use a single 4K monitor at 100% scaling with a couple of virtual desktops. Current task(s) and background apps. I haven't spent much time managing windows since. Once the windows are open for the day, that's a solved problem. Memory is cheap. Windows mostly open where I left them last time. There's a certain cognitive load to keeping all of that straight. The computer is supposed to do the thinking and apparently I can't.
tmtvl 2y ago
Awesome is very appropriately named. (I presume you're using awesome because of the combo of tags and layouts is something I've only encountered there) I actually have a configuration where I use it as window manager for KDE, to get most of the best of two worlds (awesome is my favourite window manager and KDE is a desktop environment I'm quite fond of).

by elric 2y ago

doubled112 2y ago

Absolutely agree. Use what works, and we should always be grateful to have good options. However there's a lot to most of the tiling window managers that never clicked for me. I've always assumed it's a personal problem. Perhaps I have spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about "why not?" I'm not good at remembering keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+Z seems to be all I need. I've tried sorting and categorizing apps into tags, but it makes me slower. If apps open on a virtual desktop that I couldn't see, I'd just lose it. If I can't see something it stops existing pretty quickly, which makes even too many virtual desktops a losing battle. Inconsistent behaviour will always pull me out of whatever I'm doing. 4 apps tiled, 5th app opens in a floating window, now I'm distracted. For now I use a single 4K monitor at 100% scaling with a couple of virtual desktops. Current task(s) and background apps. I haven't spent much time managing windows since. Once the windows are open for the day, that's a solved problem. Memory is cheap. Windows mostly open where I left them last time. There's a certain cognitive load to keeping all of that straight. The computer is supposed to do the thinking and apparently I can't.

tmtvl 2y ago

Awesome is very appropriately named. (I presume you're using awesome because of the combo of tags and layouts is something I've only encountered there) I actually have a configuration where I use it as window manager for KDE, to get most of the best of two worlds (awesome is my favourite window manager and KDE is a desktop environment I'm quite fond of).